ISTANBUL — A Russian warplane was downed over Syria on Saturday, apparently by a surface-to-air missile, in a rare case of rebels striking a Russian jet.
The pilot was killed after he ejected and exchanged gunfire with militants on the ground, the Russian Defense Ministry and a monitoring group said Saturday.
The rebels appeared to have shot down the Su-25 fighter jet using a man-portable antiaircraft system, Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted the Defense Ministry as saying. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said that the rebels had brought down the jet using a surface-to-air missile, also known as MANPADS.
Later Saturday, Russia claimed to have killed more than 30 militants in the area where the plane was downed, Interfax reported. The agency quoted the defense ministry as saying it used “precision-guided weapons” to carry out the strike, but without giving details.
Pro-government forces have advanced on Idlib under Russian cover in recent days. Russia entered Syria’s civil war in 2015 on the side of President Bashar al-Assad. And its intervention turned the tide of the brutal war, allowing Syria’s government to recapture the city of Aleppo from the rebels and beat back militants in other parts of the country.
But Idlib remains under militant control, including by former al-Qaeda-linked forces, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which claimed Saturday’s downing of the Russian aircraft.
“Mahmoud Turkmani, the military commander of the HTS air defence battalion, managed to shoot down a military plane by an anti-aircraft MANPADS in the sky of Saraqeb in the Idlib countryside in late afternoon today,” Ebaa News, the unofficial media outlet used by HTS, reported Saturday. The group said the Russian plane was shot down as it was bombing the city of Saraqeb. “That is the least revenge we can offer to our people and those occupiers should know that our sky is not a picnic,” Mahmoud reportedly said.
Idlib province is also home to about a million displaced people from around Syria, and renewed fighting has displaced residents within Idlib in recent weeks.
Despite repeated appeals to their international backers, rebel groups in Syria have never had a sustained supply of MANPADS. But they have occasionally used individual weapons captured from the battlefield. Rebels forces have shot down Syrian fighter jets and other Russian military aircraft. In August 2016, a Russian transport helicopter was shot down as it was flying over Idlib province, killing all five people aboard.
Videos circulating online showed the alleged crash site of the fighter jet in Idlib’s Saraqeb, which the United Nations said has recently suffered “heavy shelling and aerial bombardment.” According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, an airstrike on a potato market there earlier this week killed at least 16 people, and the town’s hospital was also attacked.
Both Russia and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the pilot Saturday was killed after exchanging fire with the rebels. He was able to communicate that he had ejected from the aircraft in an area held by al-Qaeda-linked militants, but later “died in a fight with the terrorists,” Russia’s Defense Ministry said. The ministry also said it was working with Turkey to bring the pilot’s body home.
Syria’s war has raged for seven years, and half a million people have been killed. The conflict has sucked in world powers — like Russia — but also the United States and Iran.
Louisa Loveluck in Kilis and Andrew Roth in Moscow contributed to this report.
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